The approach and landing of an aircraft requires a pilot's full attention, particularly under unfavorable weather conditions. When the ground is not visible because of cloud cover, a pilot is required to make an instrument landing. Moreover, all airlines make IFR approaches most of the time. For such purpose, IFR approach charts are provided for most runways and airports around the world. The charts are available as hard copies or can be accessed from the aircraft navigation equipment or from an electronic tablet.
Existing charts are complicated to read and understand. They need to be studied and understood before the approach. They need to be practiced. The problems with existing charts are as follows:
(1) Existing charts require a pilot to use two views, namely a plan view or a view from the sky and a profile view or a view from the side. The pilot needs to move his or her eyes from the plan view to the profile view, find needed information from both views and with this information draw a mental image of the approach to fly;
(2) Existing charts require the pilot to ask a lot of questions. The pilot needs to calculate mentally, precisely and in a very short time very important information such as, if the ground speed (GS) is 100 knots, how many feet per minute are required to descend from 2240 feet to 1650 feet in 4.3 miles while flying the aircraft and talking to air traffic control;
(3) Existing charts are always drawn north up, i.e., with north at the top of the page, which makes it difficult to provide a good picture of what the pilot will see on the approach;
(4) Information is written in many places, making it hard to find when time can be a question of life or death;
(5) The same information is written more than once and sometimes four times. The charts thus loaded with information, requiring a lot of time to read which the pilot does not have; and
(6) Because it takes time to read and understand the plates, a pilot spends less time looking at the instruments which sometimes results in a loss of control of the aircraft and a crash.
An object of the present invention is to provide solutions to the above-mentioned problems in the form of a relatively simple chart, which is more user friendly than existing charts, and which enables a pilot to make a precise, easy and safe approach to a runway.